US border security hawk and Arizona sheriff Paul Babeu running for US House
An Arizona sheriff who is a leading border security hawk says he’s running for Congress.
Pinal (pih-NAL’) County Sheriff Paul Babeu (BAB’-yoo) will seek the Republican nomination for the 4th Congressional District seat, which includes much of the Phoenix area.
[…]
Earlier, Babeu initially stood by a deputy who was wounded after encountering suspected smugglers and was later accused of staging the incident. The sheriff said the facts backed up the deputy’s account but later fired him for comments he made to a newspaper.
Here’s more about that mysterious case of the wounded deputy.
Experts are now seriously questioning Pinal County Sheriff’s Deputy Louie Puroll’s much-hyped tale of being shot by drug smugglers in a remote part of the Arizona desert. But even if every detail of Puroll’s story is true, it still does not square with many of the claims the Sheriff’s office has peddled about the case.
[…]
On August 2, Babeu appeared on Fox News and told Sean Hannity: ‘This is America, and we have armed paramilitary squad-sized elements coming through our county every day and every night, and they even ambushed one of my deputies.’
[…]
And here’s an article about what local mayors think of Babeu.
Mayors in the Arizona border towns of Nogales, Douglas and San Luis have sent a letter to Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu asking him to tone down his rhetoric about the violence along the border.
In a letter obtained by the Arizona Daily Star that was sent to Babeu on Feb. 9, Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino, San Luis Mayor Juan Escamilla and Douglas Mayor Michael Gomez ask Babeu to stop fanning the flames of fear about the border.
[…]
If Babeu gets the nomination, I hope he also gets an opponent eager to mock him. He deserves it.